science wire

Researchers to receive high-performance computing grants
Projects will advance both basic science and applications, and accelerate development of exascale computing systems Seven Harvard-affiliated researchers will receive grants to support collaborative projects in high-performance computing.

For cutting-edge biomedical materials, try corn
Winter mini-course explores plant-derived materials for wound closures, drug delivery, and tissue engineering By Mureji Fatunde '12 Students in the undergraduate teaching labs at SEAS are investigating plant-based materials that may help regrow damaged neurons.

Designing in the human context

Physics at 2,500 feet
Sharing his lifelong passion for flight, CNS manager T. Fettah Kosar teaches aerodynamics from the cockpit Ismail Türsan, at right, stands in front of the Kleopatra, a glider he built with his friends and flew in 1934, in Turkey.

Femtosecond laser research wins SPIE Green Photonics Award

Early Stage Venture Fund launches in Cambridge, Mass
Cambridge, Mass. - January 18, 2012 - When the "next big thing" is invented in a dorm room, ruminated over in a late-night café, or discovered in a laboratory, it will now find more support in - and its inventors will have better reasons to stay connected to - the Cambridge area.

Hosang Yoon and Kitty Yeung win 2012 Analog Devices design award

Stephen Chong wins Air Force Young Investigator Award

Planets with Double Suns are Common
Austin, TX - Astronomers using NASA's Kepler mission have discovered two new circumbinary planet systems - planets that orbit two stars, like Tatooine in the movie Star Wars. Their find, which brings the number of known circumbinary planets to three, shows that planets with two suns must be common, with many millions existing in our Galaxy.

Robert Howe named IEEE Fellow

Before They Were Stars: New Image Shows Space Nursery
Austin, TX - The stars we see today weren't always as serene as they appear, floating alone in the dark of night.

Harvard Tweets from Silicon Valley

Leading entrepreneurs will share their stories

Happy Holidays from SEAS

Tool detects patterns hidden in vast data sets
Relationships uncovered in data from biology, baseball, and more Researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard University have developed a tool that can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information from around the globe, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and much more.

Powerful potential
SEAS holiday lecture engages young learners with the wonders of energy By Mureji Fatunde '12 Research assistant Daniel Rosenberg, a key member of Harvard's science lecture demonstration te

No bugs at annual CS 50 Fair

Computer scientist Margo Seltzer named 2011 ACM Fellow

Capasso awarded honorary doctorate from Université Paris Diderot

Sinking ice and hovering foams

SEAS heats up for winter 2012

Aiden wins 2011 GE & Science grand prize

New Exhibition, Website Guide Visitors through the Evolving Universe

Nano meets pharma at Harvard-BASF symposium
Experts gather this week to discuss the efficient creation and delivery of nanoscale particles of drugs : Caroline Perry , (617) 496-1351 From targeted cancer chemotherapy to the guarantee of successful organ transplants, the 21st century may prove to be the age of big ideas in medicine.

Kilobots are leaving the nest
Swarm of tiny, collaborative robots will be made available to researchers, educators, and enthusiasts : Michael Patrick Rutter , (617) 496-3815 Photo courtesy of Michael Rubenstein. The Kilobots are coming. Computer scientists and engineers at Harvard University have developed and licensed technology that will make it easy to test collective algorithms on hundreds, or even thousands, of tiny robots.

NASA’s Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement
Cambridge, MA - New details about the birth of a famous black hole that took place millions of years ago have been uncovered, thanks to a team of scientists who used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as from radio, optical and other X-ray telescopes.

In new quantum-dot LED design, researchers turn troublesome molecules to their advantage
A robust new architecture enables optimization for quantum-dot displays : Caroline Perry , (617) 496-1351 By nestling quantum dots in an insulating egg-crate structure, researchers at the Ha

City Lights Could Reveal E.T. Civilization
Cambridge, MA - In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to visit Harvard

Crowdsourcing nutrition in a snap
Counting calories in photos, PlateMate proves the wisdom of the (well-managed) crowd Americans spend upwards of $40 billion a year on dieting advice and self-help books, but the first step in any healthy eating strategy is basic awareness - what's on the plate. If keeping a food diary seems like too much effort, despair not: computer scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have devised a tool that lets you snap a photo of your meal and let the crowd do the rest.

NSF Grant will help deepen our understanding of Arctic climate change
Daniel Jacob and Loretta J. Mickley are part of an NSF effort to improve predictions of climate change Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), is the lead primary investigator of a grant for $477,787 to develop an improved understanding of the distributions and decadal trends of aerosols and ozone in the Arctic and study the implications for Arctic climate change during 1980-2010.

Fall 2011 SEAS newsletter is now available
Dive down into the genetic rabbit hole, learn about cool research, and discover other news around Oxford Street Dean's Note: Down the Genetic Rabbit Hole "While we cannot - and should not

Happy birthday, Harvard!
A photo slideshow from the SEAS celebration of Harvard's 375th birthday Harvard celebrated its 375th birthday on October 14, 2011.

Bioengineer David Mooney honored with Senior Scientist Award

Not so anonymous
Latanya Sweeney challenges outdated policies with a quantitative, computational approach to privacy De-identified prescription data: is it really anonymous? Latanya Sweeney aims to make personal data more secure and to provide recourse for people who are harmed by privacy breaches.

Climate scientist Zhiming Kuang wins Meisinger Award
Honor by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) recognizes young, promising atmospheric scientists who have shown outstanding ability Zhiming Kuang, Associate Professor of Climate Science in

Progress in quantum computing, qubit by qubit
Researchers control the rate of photon emission from luminescent imperfections in diamond Engineers and physicists at Harvard have managed to capture light in tiny diamond pillars embedded in silver, releasing a stream of single photons at a controllable rate.

SEAS instructors honored with Q Certificates

Crab Pulsar Dazzles Astronomers with its Gamma-Ray Beams
Cambridge, MA - A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month. Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event. We now know that they witnessed an exploding star, which left behind a gaseous remnant known as the Crab Nebula.

NSF grant will virtualize evidence-based teaching for science and engineering
Harvard and UT-Austin aim to give any instructor, anywhere in the world, open-access research-based tools Harvard University and The University of Texas at Austin have received a $500,000 grant

CfA Project Gets First Look through New ALMA Telescope
Cambridge, MA - Humanity's most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has officially opened for astronomers at its 16,500-foot high desert plateau in northern Chile.

"Next-generation" optical tweezers trap tightly without overheating
Improved device eliminates a barrier to handling nanoscale particles The optical table in the Crozier lab at Harvard SEAS.

Federico Capasso awarded the 2011 Jan Czochralski Award
Applied physicist recognized for his lifetime achievements in the field of advanced materials science Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Sen

Slippery slope: researchers take advice from carnivorous plant
Bio-inspired coating resists liquids and could lead to a broad range of advances in fuel transport, anti-bacterial surfaces, and more After a rain, the cupped leaf of a pitcher plant becomes a virtually frictionless surface.

Two SEAS affiliates win NIH Director’s Awards

Invisible World Discovered
Cambridge, MA - Usually, running five minutes late is a bad thing since you might lose your dinner reservation or miss out on tickets to the latest show. But when a planet runs five minutes late, astronomers get excited because it suggests that another world is nearby. NASA's Kepler spacecraft has spotted a planet that alternately runs late and early in its orbit because a second, "invisible" world is tugging on it.

Research flights from the Arctic to Antarctic paint a vivid portrait of the atmosphere
Steve Wofsy, principal investigator and atmospheric scientist for the mission, says "we now have views of whole slices of the atmosphere." A three-year series of research flights from the Arc

Our Galaxy Might Hold Thousands of Ticking "Time Bombs"
Cambridge, MA - In the Hollywood blockbuster "Speed," a bomb on a bus is rigged to blow up if the bus slows down below 50 miles per hour. The premise - slow down and you explode - makes for a great action movie plot, and also happens to have a cosmic equivalent. New research shows that some old stars might be held up by their rapid spins, and when they slow down, they explode as supernovae.

NASA’s Chandra Finds Nearest Pair of Supermassive Black Holes
Cambridge, MA - Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. Approximately 160 million light-years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon. The black holes are located near the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3393.

Mapping the brain
Computer scientist Hanspeter Pfister helps turn terabytes of image data into a navigable 3D model of neural circuits By Sarah Zhang '11 The brain of a mouse measures only 1 cubic centimeter in volume.

CS undergrad wins Grace Hopper scholarship from Facebook

Q&A with Steven Salzberg 89 (Ph.D.)
Expert in bioinformatics has helped sequence the genomes of humans, anthrax, and woolly mammoths Steven Salzberg '89 developed an interest in genomics while working toward his Ph.D. in computer science at Harvard.